Thursday, October 12, 2006

Some news about Peter Temple

A number of readers have commented on the difficulty in finding the Australian author Peter Temple's books in the U.K. and the U.S. Karen Chisholm of that encyclopedic wiki site AustCrime says readers in Australia are also distressed about his availability outside that country, "although now that he's with Text Publishing we hope that will improve."

Let's hope this publisher can get more Temple into more hands everywhere. I've just begun his Bad Debts, which gets off to an awfully promising start.

14 Comments:

I actually meant getting Peter Temple books outside of Australia. Originally I think he was published here by Bantam, but having recently been picked up by Text they are now also reprinting his back catalogue which will help to again access his books. We're also hoping that they will be more aggressive in getting his books overseas. Text Publishing seem to be a very impressive Australian based publisher, very willing to take up the marketing of many excellent Australian authors (Shane Maloney as another crime fiction example).

The Broken Shore is now available at least in the UK (not sure about the US yet). (John Harvey, the English writer spoke a number of times about how much he was enjoying this novel at the Melbourne Writers Festival a couple of years ago).

Great to see some strong interest in Australian / New Zealand authors :)

Ditto the above comments.....I'm based in the UK......I got THE BROKEN SHORE okay,but in trying for the back catalogue I have got some secondhand through a book finder service in Australia.Other Aus/NZ authors I have clicked on through Australian Crime Database website,Paul Thomas,Peter Doyle,Robert Barrett-they are scarcer than rocking horse pooh in the UK.You can get them over the internet but Australian postage charges seem to bump up the cost of the books enormously....more AUS/NZ books in the UK please !

Well, I can exercise some of that sickening idealism Americans are known for and suggest that if we generate enough buzz and demand for these books, we can get more of them published in the U.K. and the U.S.

In fact, Bitter Lemon Press, which until now has published only translations, plans to bring out a book by Garry Disher next year. Perhaps Australian crime fiction will spread.

I just checked on Amazon UK, and there seem to be quite a few Peter Temple books that one can buy either via Amazon or via their sellers:http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_ss_w_h_/202-0481004-3731046?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=peter+temple&Go.x=11&Go.y=11

I bought one on your recommendation recently, now all I have to do is to find time to read it.

This place is turning into a temple of Temple. Thanks for the heads-up on the U.K. I'll have to compile a shopping list before my forthcoming trip.

I wonder if the Peter Temples turning up on Amazon UK are a result of improved distribution and overseas deals by the publisher Karen mentioned in her comment.

Which recommendation did you buy? I know that I could build quite a pile of books from recommendations others have made to me. As for finding the time, blogging does cut into one's reading, doesn't it? Should I hire someone to blog for me while I concentrate on reading, or the other way round?

The best place to go to for information about Peter Temple's books (and anyone else's) is www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/t/peter-temple/

It's an excellent site, easy to use and with links to all the major booksellers. From it I learn that Quercus in the UK is set to publish Temple's whole backlist. Good news. Peter, in wit, intelligence and atyle, he's about as far from Rankin as you can get. I only wish he'd write more.

Thanks. I'd always known about the Fantastic Fiction site. It's what I use when I want a checklist of an author's works. I'd never throught of using it as a researdh tool, as well.

It's good to hear Temple's backlist will be published in the U.K. I'll be there before I visit Australia.

You must have seen my puzzled reaction to apparent U.K. efforts to promote Temple's Jack Irish as another John Rebus. It's testimony to Rankin's success, but likely a puzzlement to readers who know Rankin and Temple.

be careful if you use fantastic fiction as a basis to purchase a book .while they are right 99% of the time,they did have a book ACID MONEY listed against PETER TEMPLE but its a different guy...if you use bookfinder.com there are loads of Peter Temple books about share dealing,hedge funds, trading etc ACID MONEY is one of his.I suppose I should have pointed this error out to them as you can provide corrections....

I found out early on about that financial writer named Peter Temple -- a great inconvenience when doing computer searches for the novelist Peter Temple.

I'll never use Fantastic Fiction as a basis for buying a book. Rather, I'll use it as a guide to, say, all the books in a particular series. I like that they break down books not just by author but by series as well.

My typical procedure for buying a book will be first to look on Amazon and see if I can read an excerpt there, then to look for the book at a used bookshop or on Abebooks.com.

One of the things I like about Fantastic Fiction is that one can link to a book's entry on Amazon directly and, if one is lucky, read an excerpt from the book. Those excerpts are Amazon's one redeeming feature. But even Amazon is infinitely preferable to the chain bookshop in the U.S., especially the abominable Borders.

Peter - thanks for mentioning Bitter Lemon Press are likely to publish Garry Disher. They are one of my favourite imprints mostly because their list is so international and so far I've found it a great recommendation for trying different nationality authors - and loved most of the ones that I have read. Night Bus by Giampiero Rigosi is a standout at the moment.

It's more than just likely. Bitter Lemon has announced May 2007 publication in the UK: http://www.bitterlemonpress.com/book_details.asp?bok=9&sec=forthcoming

Bitter Lemon is probably my favorite imprint. I most recently read Night Bus and I liked it, but not as much as I liked Thumbprint and Fever. Happily, Bitter Lemon plans to publish all Friedrich Glauser's novels. Unhappily, he wrote only six.

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This blog is a proud winner of the 2009 Spinetingler Award for special services to the industry and its blogkeeper a proud former guest on Wisconsin Public Radio's Here on Earth. In civilian life I'm a copy editor in Philadelphia. When not reading crime fiction, I like to read history. When doing neither, I like to travel. When doing none of the above, I like listening to music or playing it, the latter rarely and badly.
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